Working alone vs. partnering up

General Discussions
#1

I’ve tried both, working alone on games, and also partnering up with others. I’m not talking about working on Breakout clones, but rather end-product indie games that can potentially be sellworthy.

Working alone is least complicated, but can be boring, dull down your interest, and simply be difficult to develop since you don’t have anyone to throw ideas at, get feedback from, and share the complexity burden with. You have to do everything A-Z, sounds, graphics, code, AI, networking, etc. etc. Each task can quickly evolve into a few weeks worth of research. A single developer cannot mentally work on all aspects.

But I’ve also tried partnering with others, and that’s been a horrible experience. Out of all the projects I’ve been involved, and all the partners I’ve worked with, only 1 has not disappeared absolutely within 1 week, but that person was still only 1/3 as active as I was, although he did do work for 3 months. Most of these people seem to be very green as well. But really, do people join projects as a laugh? The worst part with a partner that is absent is that you think you have someone to work with, throw ideas at, but just isn’t there.

I simply do not understand why it’s so difficult to find a proper partner to develop games with. There seem to be a lot of individual game developers out there in the same situation, but somehow it seems near impossible for people to cooperate.

All these resources working alone and produce nil.

Ok, what is this post all about? Just ranting. It’s healthy to do sometimes.

#2

Read a pretty nice article a while back. It describes finding a gaming making partner as follows:

[quote]Finding a good game-making partner is like dating in a lot of ways. You may think that all that matters is skill: “Oh cool, I’m a programmer, and this guy’s an artist… let’s DO THIS!” But no, there are other things to consider, like personality, experience, timing, and mutual interest. Like a romantic relationship, you don’t want to be in a position where either you or the other person is far less dedicated. Test each other out a bit with some smaller projects, because it can really be devastating when a key person drops out after months or years of development.
[/quote]

#3

[/quote]
So, True :slight_smile:

#4

You should set bar higher and try to pick only team mebers that has good track record.

#5

As with the dating metaphor, those who have a good track record are already taken. It’s like hitting on women that are only married, because they have a good “track record”.

But why should anyone with a good track record join with someone who has none?

#6

Becouse everyone there know you. If I would not have two jobs and one project I would be more than willingly to team up with you and I bet there is many like me out there. Most of them likely has lot more merits than me.

#7

Btw. love your KERS game. It’s a bit rough, but fun, simple and tough :slight_smile:

#8

And yet when it comes to selling your games that took years to make etc. etc. it seems that people get positively irate if you try and charge more than $5 for them, which doesn’t amount to much when it’s all split up. So you wonder why no-one wants to work in indie games development :slight_smile:

…well, rather, everyone wants to work in indie games development, but only after a few years realise it’s hard slog and not the road to riches that might have been perceived…

Cas :slight_smile:

#9

I’ve had good times working together with a friend when I wrote the deceased Tactics Pompster Online . The problem, is that always one part has more motivation than the other, and one will always think the others are not engaged enough on the project .

On my last project, Reign of Rebels I decided to work completely alone, from coding to graphics . I must say it is very rewarding to see it when it comes to an evolved stage, however many times I wish I had a partner maybe just to keep my motivation up . Right now I’m pretty busy at work and have few time to work on it, and the less I work on it, the more my motivation fades .

Somtimes I wish I had a partner, but it is indeed difficult to find a person who is good AND engaged enough . Some people have offered to join me, but I think I would just lose lots of valuable time explaining my code and the guy would drop out in the first real challenge .

Yeah. rant rant rant .

#10

Hi!

[quote=“appel,post:1,topic:36893”]
I think handling all aspects alone is hard, I agree with you, we can hardly be very good both in programming and arts. However, the relationship with the interest and the fact you’re alone depends on each person, we are all different. In my case, I work almost always alone for years, only a few few people are interested in my projects and I don’t mind. I make my game for me first and after that for others. You can get feedbacks from people who are not in your team, even on technical aspects for example in open source projects.

#11

I guess I’m really more motivated when I work in team and I get more inspiration. My biggest problem is often to get feedback on my idea. Most of the time I spend developing is not actually coding it but rather designing the way (usually away from my computer). You have to think to a lot of things to get a good gameplay and once you got your idea well defined it’s easy to code (but it can still be a boring game). I would say my time spent on a project is as follow.

coding : 10%
debugging code : 20%
testing game : 30%
designing game : 40%

I don’t know why it’s like that, but it’s the reality for me. (Unless I hit a technical wall :slight_smile: )

#12

Maybe my view is a bit simplistic or outdated, but I seriously believe that for two people to work together as a team and stay motivated, they have to be in the same room.

#13

Well they at least need to communicate directly, it’s true. Chat is a minimum. Talking with real voice online is even better.

#14

Chat is a really poor substitute for speech. Video chat is still nowhere near as good as reallife. Maybe some people would manage, but I’m sure I wouldn’t.

#15

I know it rarely ends well, but I’m going to have to try teaming-up on a game project some day.

Maybe I’m odd but I like working as part of a team in my day job. Although possibly I’ve been lucky in having (for the most part) competent, sane(-ish), well-organized co-workers (YMMV).

The worst thing about working on games by myself is having an idiot for a boss. :stuck_out_tongue:

Simon

#16

My theory is that until I can finish my own game, I will be lacking my ‘battle scars’ that gives me street cred to both join a future team or attract other members.

I know from my own professional experience in non-gaming programming, that the last 10% of the project takes 90% of the effort and the majority of it is not sexy nor exciting.

The barrier to entry to the game creation community is pretty low (play games, sign up on a forum). How many of 100 people who say they want to make a game, actually complete one?

#17

Exactly this.

In 99,9% this only works if you personally know the guy and you worked with him in the same room once. There has to be some social aspect to this like the partner want to stay your friend or want to stay in business with you. It simply doesn’t work (let there be the 0,1% exception) with people found on the internet.

#18

Although it’s not released yet, I think I have a successful relationship going with an artist and we to this day have not developed in the same room. He finds artist friends to help out, and I find engineer friends to help out, and we develop whenever we have time and send email updates. These are the key takeaways for me to make that work:

  1. Send a lot of emails, and be really detailed about them.
  2. Have regular Skype calls, like once every couple of weeks. This is great for spitballing ideas.
  3. Set milestones, and hit them. Without milestones, it’s very easy just to not do any work and play video games instead. :slight_smile:

All that being said, we did in fact push back our announce/unveil date for our project, because we agreed it was still too rough. It is now almost a month after the fact. But the way I feel, even if it’s a snail’s pace, as long as both people continue doing work (i.e. they don’t actually stop) then the project is healthy. It’s not like we want to make money or live off this (well that would be great, but I’m a realist), we just want to get something out there. So time is not of the essence, as long as there is progress.

#19

I know its not “ideal” for everyone, but one way one of my friends and I are able to “be like in the same room” but not

We use skype, with 2 monitors, and we set up a screen share, so that he sees my desktop, and I see his desktop, full screen. We then can just talk and see whats happening. If he has a question, I can instantly see what its about, and I can show him on mine.

Its the closest thing to being in the same room.

We haven’t worked together like this for any real “projects” but for mini random things, its quite useful. And you don’t need the frames per second all that high for most things like this. If you want you can even set up the camera in the corner too if you need to see faces.

Though I still agree, nothing beats in person.
You need alone time and together time in programming I feel.

#20

The programming team in my day job is two people; me and my twin brother. We live 800km away from each other for the past 11 years. The rest of the company is also split in these two locations and I have a hard time remembering the last time we were all together in the same room. The project works, we’re expanding, competition has a very hard time catching up to us. Development has been non-stop for the past 3 years.

All discussions are done via skype or classic phone calls. Oddly, we rarely use emails, it’s indeed better/faster to just talk to each other. Emails are usually 3rd party info and bug reports.